Yellow Chocolate
Issue 15 | June 2010
Agency
AIM Proximity, Auckland
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: Nick Worthington; Creative Director: Steve Cochran; Digital Creative Director: Aaron Turk
Production Team
Agency Producer: Paul Courtney; Director: Chris Grahame; Producer: Tanya Haitoua-Cathro; Sound Production: Kog Studio & Native Audio
Other Credits
Planning Director: James Hurman ; Group Account Director: Andrew Holt ; Account Director: Rachel Turner ; Account Manager: Katya Urlwin ; Digital Account Director: Terri Williams
Date
September 2009 to February 2010
Background
For the Google generation, Yellow Pages is a big, antiquated book that’s had its time.
The challenge was not to tell this young cynical audience that the Yellow brand is modern and relevant to them, both online and offline, but to prove it. The task was to get them to become active participants with the brand.
Idea
Regular New Zealander Josh was invited to create and launch a chocolate bar to New Zealand that tasted of yellow using only businesses he could find in Yellow to help him. TV spots highlighted his progress, pointing consumers to his website to watch webisodes, chat, make suggestions, and learn about the businesses that were supporting him. They could also join his fan page on Facebook and sign up for tweets.
The campaign was a true mix of media elements, each asking the consumer to engage deeper with the Yellow brand. As more and more people got on board with Josh’s journey to make a yellow chocolate, anticipation, discussion, and debate around the taste of yellow grew. When, five months later, Josh launched his yellow tasting chocolate bar in supermarkets at $2 a bar, it flew off the shelves. Effectively, what Kiwi consumers were buying was a piece of direct marketing. Every bar carried the story of how it had been created using the Yellow pages.
Results
Josh’s yellow-tasting chocolate bar was the fastest selling chocolate bar in New Zealand in ten years. People happily paid $2 for what was actually a piece of marketing communications with what amounted to pretty much a 100% opening rate. Some supermarkets sold out on launch day and bars were soon traded online for up to $320. The website built a following of more than 80,000 people with another 16,000 fans on Facebook fans (and now a NZ Facebook case study) and 800 followers on Twitter.
Our Thoughts
There would have been two kinds of response to the creative brief asking for a follow-up campaign to last year’s brilliant Yellow Treehouse idea, which won awards around the world. One, oh shit….how do we top that? Two, oh brilliant, how do we top that? Adopting the second approach, the team in College Road, Auckland, have given juries everywhere a real headache. Can they, should they be giving the big prizes yet again to AIM Proximity and Yellow? The answer is, yes, of course you should. Yes, it’s another demonstration of how much you can do with a mobile and Yellow, but it’s so much more than that. It has down-to-earthness, charm, and surprise. I mean, yellow chocolate? Very sweet.